1. Field
This invention is in the field of ground meat products and methods of making them and is concerned particularly with the production of a novel, extruded, ground meat product having elongate, side-by-side strands of muscle fiber, with or without fat, that are preferably largely enclosed peripherally of the product by an envelope of merged extrudate.
2. State of the Art
Many different meat products have been produced by various procedures and using various machines or other apparatus through the many, many years that people have been eating meat as a food. Thus, chunks of beef have long been ground by extrusion under pressure through a perforated, thick, metal die plate, across the entry face of which is rotated a multibladed cutting knife in the making of hamburger patties or meat loaves, or the stuffing for sausages or for split primal cuts, such as flank steaks or pork chops. Other meats, such as chicken, turkey, and fish have been forced through perforations of metal tubes as ground skeletal remains of the chicken, turkey, or fish are moved within the tubes from inlet ends to outlet ends thereof by an auger screw in so-called deboning machines.
Almost universally, the relatively small extrusion openings of perforated extrusion plates or tubes used in these machines have been and are circular, as they are in the thick, circular, extrusion die plates produced by Speco, Inc. of Schiller Park, Ill., for meat grinders in accordance with U.S. Pat. No. 4,004,742. However, relatively large openings of various shapes are employed in some of the Speco, Inc.""s extrusion plates for mincing and otherwise cutting and forming meat and other foods.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,765,768, issued Mar. 6, 1996, for PLATE FOR USE ON THE OUTLET OF A FOOD GRINDER FOR MAKING SHEETS OF FOODS, inventor Eugene A. Gagliardo, Jr. discloses and claims the provision of narrow but very long, straight or curved, extrusion openings extending entirely (some about halfway) across the entry and outlet faces of and through the usual thick, circular, metal die plate of a conventional meat grinder, so as to produce separate, relatively wide sheets of a meat or other food material that are ground by and extruded through the die plate. This patent describes the theretofore prior art and how it is improved from the standpoint of both apparatus and method in order to extrude ground meat in desired separate sheets to be thereafter scrambled together to produce the restructured meat product that is disclosed in an earlier patent, U.S. Pat. No. 4,728,524, by the same inventor.
The thick circular die plates for meat grinders and other machines, such as the afore-referred to Speco, Inc. die plates, are normally perforated throughout the circular area of the die plate, with provision for eliminating bone from meat being ground as in the aforementioned Speco, Inc. patent, but the circular perforations of the die plate may be limited to a relatively small, rectangular area within the circular extent of the die plate as is obtainable in grinder die plates sold by both Speco, Inc. and Robert Reiser and Co., Inc., of Boston, Mass., the round extrusion holes being in multirows for extruding, for example, a continuous, thick, multilayered ribbon-shaped product of beef as hamburger meat. This extruded, multilayered, ribbon-shaped product is cut transversely by a so-called xe2x80x9cguillotinexe2x80x9dto form hamburger patties.
In accordance with the present invention, meat of any desired kind, normally free of bone and other hard tissue, is extruded through the extrusion openings of a perforated die, normally a usual, thick type of die plate having mutually opposite broad faces and mutually opposite narrow faces, but one wherein the extrusion openings are moderately elongate and closely spaced end-to-end in their extension sidewise of the broad faces of the die plate to produce products substantially replicating natural, unground, primal cuts of meat, such as steaks, in the provision of side-by-side, longitudinal strands, preferably in multilayers, largely enclosed peripherally by merged extrudate. The strands of the product of the invention are formed of ground meat rather than of natural, unground meat of usual prime cuts.
For enclosing a multilayered product peripherally, the extrusion openings in the internal rows of the die are closely adjacent to each other end-to-end, but do not intercommunicate. However, the extrusion openings of the external rows of the die do intercommunicate end-to-end, but do so leaving enough of intervening portions of the die plate to hold it together as an integrated die, and also preferably leaving the exterior ends of openings at opposite sides of the perforated area of the die plate also intercommunicating by way of passages provided through intervening portions of the die plate. In this way, it becomes possible to extrude through the thickness of the die plate a longitudinally continuous, multilayered product having at least one interior layer made up of separate strands of the extruded material extending closely side-by-side longitudinally of the extruded product and having exterior layers also made up of separate strands of the extruded material. Such external layers extend longitudinally of and along both broad faces and both relatively narrow lateral faces of the product but are interconnected sidewardly in their longitudinal extensions to provide an envelope substantially enclosing the extruded product longitudinally, except for the transverse, cut, edge faces which normally remain open.
Thus, as a part of the present invention, it has been found that ground meat pressed into and extruded through relatively small, moderately elongate, extrusion openings extending closely end-to-end in preferably multiple rows of same as respective multiple layers within the perforated area of an extrusion die plate of a usual grinding or filling machine, or of a similar die associated with some other source of ground meat that is substantially free of bones and other heavy tissue, will be formed as fibrous strands extending longitudinally of the product, and that these strands should be retained in the resulting product so as to substantially correspond in appearance and taste with natural primal cuts of unground meat.
Accordingly, an important aspect of the invention is to produce side-by-side fibrous strands longitudinally of a ground meat extrudate that retain their strand formation in the final extrusion product.
If the protein in the meat becomes soluble, it tends to stick together and to make the product similar to the restructured product of the Gagliardo patents. Therefore, in the commercial meat product of the present invention, the protein should not be made soluble as it is in the Gagliardo product by reason of the mechanical working applied thereto or of materials added thereto.
In accordance with the invention, an intermediate product is preferably made up of longitudinally continuous, side-by-side, fibrous strands of ground meat, that are preferably extruded as a multilayered, ribbon-shaped product, the product being preferably closed along respective longitudinal broad faces and along respective longitudinal, relatively narrow, edge faces, so that, when individual final products are provided by cutting the continuous extrudate transversely at intervals and such products are purchased, uncooked or cooked, the included moisture and meat juices are heated during the cooking and retained about the individual strands to keep them soft and tasteful in addition to giving the appearance of natural, unground, primal cuts of meat, such as steaks.
As previously indicated, the special die of the invention is made up of extrusion openings that are moderately elongate in comparison to the width of a perforated area of the die and are closely spaced end-to-end in a row or rows extending sidewise of the extent of the perforated area of the die plate, preferably with those extrusion openings that are external to the perforated area intercommunicating by way of passages through otherwise obstructing, intervening portions of the die plate to provide a substantially enclosing envelope of extrudate about the extruded, preferably multilayered final product.
Moreover, in accordance with preferred procedure, the protein in the meat product is prevented from disintegrating chemically by contact with solubilizers therefor, as by encapsulation of any solubilizers used or by limiting the extent of any mechanical mixing action.
Although the meat, as ground, may be introduced into the special extrusion die of the invention by a vacuum-filling machine, such as by the aforementioned VEMAG(copyright) vacuum-filling machine, the usual head die plate of that machine is replaced by a similar thick type of extrusion die plate of the invention.